Letter

Olympic amateurism

Mary Beard's fine article on the ancient Olympics (Keepers of the flame, Review, 23 June) contains a misconception relating to Pierre de Coubertin's position on amateurism. While his Paris congresses of 1892/94 centred on the subject of amateur status, he merely deployed them as a screen for his true purpose, the revival of the Olympic Games. "Amateurism, an admirable mummy that could be presented at the Museum of Boulak as a specimen of the modern art of embalming," he said in his memoirs. "It later seemed to me as childish to let all this depend on whether an athlete received a five franc piece as to consider the parish verger an unbeliever because he received a salary for looking after the church." Alas, he never publicly expressed such heresies, for amateurism was then the only game in town. Only in 1982 was sport cleansed of an amateurism that had always been more honoured in the breach.Tom McNabSt Albans, Hertfordshire